


Fjord Mustang's YEEHAW! Fun and Pony Ranch

by Mikkeneko



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Biker Yasha, City Boy Caleb, Cowboy Fjord, Delinquent Beau, Everyone Is Gay, Financial Issues, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Small Towns, country life, ranch au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2020-05-16 05:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19311775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: Business has been slow on the ranch that Fjord's adopted father left to him, and he finds himself searching for ways to keep the lights on. Fortunately, his best friend Jester has a few ideas for how to bring in revenue. Her marketing ideas bring in new customers from all over -- including one reticent, reclusive redhead from the city who's now staying in the cabin down by the lakeside...





	1. The Ranch

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is! I've had this idea for quite a while, but with widofjord week happening and today being the day for Modern AUs, it seemed like the right time to start it off.
> 
> I've only written the first three chapters so far and am not sure when I'll continue it. I'm attempting a more slice-of-life format than my usual narrative-driven style, so that might make it easier to get new chapters out. In fact I'm doing a number of things in this fic I haven't done before -- slice-of-life, modern era farm AU, and widofjord. Hopefully the result is worth reading.
> 
> Thanks are most due to yettinim, who inspired and helped me work out a lot of the details for this AU.

 

Fjord stared down at the spreadsheets with his heart sinking into his boots. He'd done the math -- twice, once by computer and once by hand -- added up the columns six ways to Sunday, and they all agreed. Even with the most hopeful projections of revenue the ranch might or might not be able to collect on this season, at the rate things were going they'd be bankrupt by the end of the year.

He set his elbows on the desk and rested his face in his palms. When he found himself worrying at the top of his tusks where they poked over his bottom lip he purposefully redirected himself, running his hands up over his head and through his close-shorn hair before letting go. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling, then blew out his breath.

He hadn't asked for the property title. He'd never asked for Vandren to leave the ranch to him; he wasn't a blood son, wasn't a member of the shareholding board, he was just a ranch hand that had drifted by a few years ago and stayed when Vandren had made a place for him here. He'd never asked Vandren to deed him the title, didn't know what he'd done to make Vandren think he wanted the responsibility -- but facts were facts. This was the only home he had, now, and if he didn't do  _ something _  in the next five months, he'd lose it. He'd lose everything.

"I don't know, Jes," he said, letting his hands fall to his sides. "I've got nothing."

"That's not true, Fjord," Jester said bracingly. "You've got  _ lots _  of resources, you just need to monetize them!"

"We've got a hundred acres of farmland that can't produce good enough product to pay for the cost of watering it, fifty more that ain't even fit for that, a half-empty horsebarn and a handful of other livestock," Fjord said bitterly. "We're too small to compete with the big corps and too big to run as a homestead. What have we got that makes us even  _ remotely _  viable?"

"You've got  _ facilities,  _ Fjord," Jester cooed. She shuffled through her file folder and pulled out a Maps printout. Fjord went nearly crosseyed trying to read it as she shoved it nearly in his face. "Look! The ranch might not be in the best rainfall zone, but it  _ is _  right on the freeway only a few hours' drive from Zadash. An easy day trip for families with small children."

"What have we got that's of interest to small children, Jes?"

"Oh, that's easy!" Jester said brightly. She opened the file folder and began flipping sheet after sheet onto the table in front of him. "You've got hayrides! Corn mazes! Apple picking! Pumpkin patches! Pony rides! A petting zoo! All sorts of fun for the kiddies!!"

"We don't have  _ any _  of that stuff," Fjord sighed.

"But you  _ could, _ " Jester said. "If you wanted to. If you  _ tried. _  This place has the space to be a real tourist attraction, if you're just willing to get over your silly hangups and  _ lean _  into the marketing a little. C'mon, Fjord, is your pride really worth giving up Vandren's legacy?"

Fjord flinched. "It ain't a matter of  _ pride,  _ Jesse," he protested. "I just... how do you know it'll really work?"

"It will! Trust me!" Jester said eagerly. "I've got the new website all ready to go, as soon as you give the okay. A couple can of paint, some new decorations, and you can keep renovating even as the tourists roll in!"

"And what if they don't roll in?" He grimaced. "About the only line of revenue we can count on any more is the stablin' fees for rich folks keeping their horses with us. If we go through with this, and turn this place into a sideshow, what if they decide to pull their horses out? What if they decide we aren't trustworthy any more? Then we'd have nothing, and no guarantee that the new attractions would bring in enough to make up for it."

"Fjord, you're such a  _ downer." _  Jester's nose wrinkled cutely. "It'll work, okay? I went to  _ school _  for this stuff. It works! Lots of other farms have converted over to the same model. You just need the right marketing, and  _ I _  can take care of that."

He knew she could, and that honestly made him feel even worse. "Jester, I can't pay you," he sighed. "I know a campaign like this normally runs in the thousands, even tens of thousands, but the money just ain't there."

"Don't  _ worry _  about that," Jester said emphatically. "It's for my final project, okay? I'm  _ sure _  that Professor Artagan will give me a good grade when he sees how all my great work has turned a whole business around!" 

She shuffled up the papers into the folder and pressed it into his hands. He stared down at it, heart sinking, until she reached up one blue hand and nudged his chin upwards. It was impossible to look into Jester's smiling face and remain glum. "All I want from  _ you _  is a promise that you'll try your best, okay?" she said. "You've got to really sell your part, the image of the handsome cowboy, and I  _ know _  you can do it as long as you put your heart in it. Everybody likes you Fjord, and you  _ love _  this place, and if you let that show through then everybody else will love it too. Promise me you'll  _ try, _  okay?"

He stared at her for a long moment, swallowing the last of his misgivings. Jester had been his best friend ever since he came to this town; she'd been one of the few local townsfolk to befriend a penniless half-orc drifter. 

Fjord loved her as a sister; people around town had been gossiping about the two of them since the first time Jester's mom had invited him in for dinner. But the fiasco during the Apple Gala three years ago -- where a drunken Fjord had ended up shagging Jester's best friend in the back of a haycart even as Jester was accepting the bouquet of flowers that crowned her the Corn Queen -- had at least stopped the people about town from asking Fjord when he planned to pop the big question. 

Jester had gone off to Zadash to enroll in business school, Fjord hadn't been able to look Molly in the eye for six months, and the town had gotten a whole lot less colorful without her presence.

He still didn't think this whole tourist business was a good idea. He didn't think he had it in him to clown it up for cartloads of bored cityfolk and their hyperactive kids, didn't think there was enough on Vandren's old ranch to lure them out here into the boonies in the first place let alone empty their pockets into the ranch's hungry spreadsheets.

But Jester was sure it would work, and she wanted him to try. And for her, he'd try.

"Okay," he said, voice growing firm. "Let's do it."

They spent the rest of the week making preparations. At midnight on Sunday Jester's new website went live, advertising all of the delights of a rustic ranch adventure. And the next morning, Fjord carefully hammered the new sign into place.

_Vandren Esq. Fine Thoroughbred Stock, Ltd.,_  came down just before dawn. In its place rose the new sign, written in bubble letters in bright green and purple paint: **_Fjord Mustang's YEEHAW! Fun and Pony Ranch!_**

 

* * *

 

 

 ****~tbc...


	2. The Bar

 

The summer sun beat down over Seeping Springs, Felderwin, miles of blaring blue sky over a scattered dusty plain. The buildings spaced out along Lakeline Drive gave off the notion, Fjord fancied, of having shrunk in the sun; they were too small for the amount of space each lot gave them, half a block of empty street between one storefront and the next. Even in the early afternoon on a weekday, he didn't cross paths with another single soul on his walk into town.

Seeping Springs was too far off the map to be worth its own website. As a town it rated only a single page on Felderwin's tourism site: an overbright photograph of a generic landscape with a few measly paragraphs of text that listed the town's founder, the date of its incorporation, and named it the birthplace of a moderately popular country singer who had become famous only  _ after _  she was well away from Seeping Springs. The entry boasted that in its entire existence, Seeping Springs had never broken a population of 300, which Fjord thought was a damn odd thing to be proud of.

One entire paragraph of the town's entry was dedicated to describing its commemorative marker.

The only justification for the town's existence -- the eponymous springs -- weren't even photogenic enough to attract tourists, although the upwelling aquifer did at least create a moderately sized lake on the far side of town from the freeway. A few acres of land immediately around the lake and the springs were well-watered enough to grow fruit trees, berries, and corn; more than a mile or two in any direction and the land dried out, fit only for grapevines and ranching. 

The town of Seeping Springs was so small that barely any of the public buildings that dotted the single main road (with its single lonely stoplight, where Lakeline Drive crossed the Seeping Springs Road freeway exit) were just one thing. The library shared a building with the post office; the general store, run by Pumat Sol and his two brothers, was also the only grocery; the gas station also hosted the town's only car mechanic; the school combined K-8 in a single building which also served as the town hall on Saturdays and its church on Sundays. Seeping Springs had no high school, and after graduating from eighth grade local children had to be bussed in to the nearby city of Kamordah for continuing education. Few of them ever bothered to come back when they graduated.

And the town's only restaurant --  _ Molly's  _ \-- was also its only bar, owned and run by the tiefling of the same name.

(Technically _Molly's_  wasn't the bar's official name, but its owner had changed its name so many times that Fjord had entirely lost track. The last time he'd checked the name on the paperwork was _The Flight of the Flycatcher,_  but that had been more than four months ago, so it was probably something else now. Before that it had been _Albatross Landing,_  and before _that_  it had been _The Disarmed Tuba._   
  
For understandable reasons, the rest of the town just called it _Molly's.)_

From four to eight on weekdays Molly opened the back half of the bar up to the public and Nila, a motherly local firbolg with little else to keep her occupied, faithfully cooked up a storm in the little one-man kitchen while Molly bussed tables. The rest of the time, the restaurant part of the bar sat dark and empty while Molly manned the bar by himself. Despite its owner's eclectic taste in decor,  _ Molly's  _ was clean and sanitary, the food tasty and the drinks satisfactory -- but business had never, in Fjord's entire time here, been brisk enough to warrant needing another person.

_ Molly's _  had one regular at least. Beauregard Lionett could be found sitting at the bar most days after lunch and before the restaurant hours, steadily putting Molly's kids through college, if he had any kids and if there was any college nearby to go through. Beau was a local, the daughter of the prestigious Lionett Wineries up on the hill whose employees and staff made up a solid third of the town's population. From what Fjord had heard -- not that he'd ever ask her directly -- there had been some falling out between Beau and her parents that led her to spend far more time down in the town than up in her family's home. 

When Beau wasn't singlehandedly drinking her way through Molly's inventory (and, Fjord had to hand it to her, her tolerance was astounding) she frequently came over to the ranch to lend a hand with the horses. Despite his reservations she was good with the animals, and took the job seriously enough that he trusted her with all but the most nervy and expensive of the bloodstock. He'd offered to pay her on more than one occasion, but she'd brushed him off -- seemed almost outraged by the suggestion. He'd let it be, and the two of them had developed a tentative friendship over the last few seasons.

The friendship between Beau and Molly he found a little harder to understand. The two spent more time sniping at each other than talking civilly, but they seemed to almost like it that way. Molly spent much of his time coming up with new, ever-weirder drink combinations to inflict on Beau, and Beau gamely drank her way through each and every one.

As Fjord entered the bar, Molly set a rocks glass on the bar and slid it over to Beau's reach. "Here," he was saying as the door swung shut behind Fjord. Beau grabbed the murky drink up and shotgunned it, then immediately began choking. 

"Halfsies whiskey and tabasco sauce," Molly said as Beau coughed and pounded her chest. He smirked. "I call this one a  _ Fuck You." _

Beau slammed the glass back on the bar and shoved it back towards him. "Joke's on you," she wheezed, glaring at him through watering eyes. " _Free_ _whiskey_  for me."

"Afternoon, kids," Fjord said as he slid into a comfortable, worn stool at the bar. Molly looked up at him with a smile, Beau with a scowl, although the truth was that Fjord actually had no idea how old Molly was. Nobody did, including (Fjord suspected) Molly himself. "Can I get a brandy  old-fashioned, Molls?"

"Yo, Fjord," Beau greeted him with a casual insolence. "How's the kiddie ride and clown rodeo going for you?"

Fjord grimaced as Molly laughed, turning to pull a fresh glass down from the shelf. "It's goin'," he said. "A couple of families in cars -- more'n I feared, but less than I'd hoped... Jester's thinkin' that as word gets out an' people start leaving reviews on Yelp and stuff, news will spread by word of mouth, and we'll get more."

"Yeah, well, you should listen to Jester, she's better at this stuff than you," Beau said in her typical blunt way. Fjord shrugged a little; she wasn't wrong. "You still aren't getting  _ me _ to parade around in one of those stupid hat and boots combo, putting on grade-school plays of 'where do sausages come from' for city brats and their dead-eyed parents."

"I'm in favor," Molly said, fishing out a cherry from the black jar that said  _ Filthy _  and popping it in the glass.  "If you can drum up any tourist traffic around here, a few of them might find their way across the street to give  _ me _  some business. Couldn't hurt."

Beau agreed. "Yeah, and maybe we can get some actually  _ good _  prospects going around here! I'm dyin', man, there's no more fish in this pond."

Fjord sighed. "I don't think the family types who come out for 'all-ages family fun on the farm' are gonna be on your radar, Beau," he said.

"Hey, you never know," Beau objected, her voice tinged with a hope that was grounded more in desperation than reality. "Divorced soccer moms, drunk college girls... it could happen."

"Didn't you have something going on with that dwarven lady, what was her name, Keg?" Fjord inquired genially.

Beau's shoulders hunched down around her glass. "Yeah, well, she moved on," she groused, and tossed back the rest of the shot in one go. " _ All _  the good ones move on. Nothing to stay for in this shithole."

Despite himself Fjord couldn't help but be moved by the despondency in her voice; still -- "That's still more hits than I've had," he said glumly. "By now I've slept with every available guy in town."

"Yeah," Molly drawled as he set Fjord's drink in front of him. "That was  _ one _  guy. Me. So we are very much in the same boat, or haycart, as it were."

In addition to being the town's only bar, only restaurant, and only tiefling-owned business,  _ Molly's _  filled another function: it was the one and only scene for the nightlife of the town's queer community. Which consisted -- as far as Fjord was aware -- of Fjord, Beau, and Molly himself. 

(Well, and possibly the old lady on the other edge of town -- Madame Musk -- who had never been married and took far too much joy in raising beaded lizards for Fjord to make any assumptions about her lifestyle. But she was a militant tea-totaller and never came near the bar, which Fjord was just as happy with.)

Beau and Molly were oddities in the town's demographic. Seeping Springs was not a town for the young of any stripe, and demographics skewed the numbers even more aggressively out of their favor. The biggest single demographic was that of retired, elderly gnomes and halflings that made up so much of the population of Felderwin. They occupied nearly half of the little town's houses with the Lionett staff taking up most of the rest; and while they tended towards conservative, disapproving views on alternative lifestyles, they were at least too old and too polite to do anything about it.

There were a few households with small children, such as Nila and her son, and a handful of middle-aged independent farmholders, like Fjord and a few others around the springs. There were less than twenty children in the entire town and when it came to college-age young adults, the place was a ghost town. Seeping Springs was a nice enough town to be  _ from, _  but there was little here to attract the young. 

Molly watched the two of them wallowing in their sorrows and rolled his shoulders back, tipping his face to the ceiling and giving a theatrical sigh. "You two need to get  _ laid," _  was his pronouncement. "Badly."

Beau sneered at him. "If I needed to get badly laid, I'd sleep with  _ you," _  she said.

Fjord made an impressed noise at the burn. Molly stared at Beau for a long minute, then reached out for a new glass and bottle. He silently mixed another halfsies tabasco and whiskey, and slid it across the bar to Beau.

Even Fjord himself hadn't exactly picked Seeping Springs as a town to settle down in. Kicked out of the foster system at barely fifteen with no money, no connections and no prospects, he'd looked for work wherever he could find it and had ended up traveling with the other migrant workers looking for seasonal labor. Vandren's was the first place he'd worked at where the owner actually invited him to stick around, lending a hand not just for the season but all around the year. One year had turned to another, then to another, and the ranch had gradually gone from being a workplace to being a home. Vandren had kept him on even when the crops dwindled, and the budget shrank, and the debts mounted, treating him not just like a worker but like a son.

And after Vandren...

Well, it was his now. All hundred acres of it. And Seeping Springs might be a dull, lifeless, time-lost reject of the rest of the world, but it was the place that had welcomed him in. The place he'd found family, then friends. He'd stick it out here, for better or for worse.

No matter how lonely it got sometimes in the old farmhouse by himself, without Vandren or Sabien or any of the rest of the gang. Spring and summer had been lonely enough; fall and winter, in the growing dark and the prairie snowstorms that came howling through and buried the whole town under a yard of snow, would likely be -- well, worse.

Molly interrupted his thoughts, folding his arms and leaning across the bar. He nodded towards Fjord's drink. "Want another, Fjord?" he asked.

"Sure," Fjord said. He slapped an electrum piece on the bar and tried not to wince for it. "Keep 'em coming."

 

* * *

 

 

~tbc...


	3. The Cabin

The lake was grey. It was always grey, even when the sky overhead was sunny, and the breeze coming off it was always cold. In the sweltering heat of the afternoon it made for a welcome change, at least.

Fjord had picked the most scenic spot on the lakeshore to build the new cabin, although even that wasn't very scenic. It wasn't a particularly scenic lake to begin with -- the rocky shore alternated between grey stone outcroppings and brownish sand with only scrubby trees along the ridgeline. But the cabin faced out over the lake, away from the town and the freeway, and the slope of the land meant that the cabin itself was easily overlooked until you were standing right on top of it. It offered privacy, quiet, and at least the illusion of solitude.

The last shack to occupy that spot on the lakeshore had been placed for the privacy above anything else, considering what purpose it had been used for. Fjord had dragged a dozen or more pieces of equipment out of the shack that were so obviously for illegal purposes that he'd had to break them down nearly into their component parts, and in the end it was simpler and more thorough to just burn the shack entirely and rebuild over it than try to refurbish it.

The new cabin was tidy and clean, with thick walls and plenty of caulking around the doors and windows to keep it airtight cool in the summer, warm in the winter. There was a good view of the lake through the window and a porch out front with an even better one (and a carefully placed windbreak.) It had a wood-frame bed, a pair of chairs and a table, cabinets and drawers that Fjord had all made himself. He'd done the wiring and pipelaying too, and the only pieces of furniture in the cabin that he hadn't made with his own two hands (well, and the help of power tools) were the minifridge and the commode.

The overall effect was rustic but (Fjord hoped) also cozy and charming. Jester had described the lakeside cabin in her ad copy as " _ the perfect place to get away from the manic rat race of everyday life and reconnect with nature and your inner self!" _  but privately, Fjord had doubted that anyone would actually be interested in renting it.

He'd been wrong.

The pair (he couldn't, even in his head, bring himself to call them 'the couple') that stood on the grey lakeshore, between him and the cabin, could not have more clearly telegraphed that they were from THE CITY if they'd had it embroidered on their jackets. 

The smaller of the pair was a halfling woman with brown skin and brown hair, both with a reddish cast that glowed in the bright noon sunlight. Her overall appearance was something that Fjord had immediately named as 'granola;'  she kept her auburn hair in two thick dark braids over her shoulder, kept back from her face with a cloth headband. She wore sandals, a green dress, a gauzy green shawl, and more buttons than Fjord had ever seen outside of a Joanne's aisle display. He might have thought she seemed nice -- friendly -- approachable even, if not for the way she rattled on nonstop with a slightly nervous edge as though she was afraid if she stopped talking she'd never get to speak again.

The human, in contrast, had said nothing through the entire meeting so far. He had pale skin and reddish hair, but most of it was covered up by the layers he wore even in the hot summer noon. Black slacks, black shoes that shone bright black and came to a point (neat and tidy enough to make Fjord incredibly self-conscious of his own scuffed, worn, mud-flecked boots.) A dark grey Henley, a stylish black topcoat, and black wraparound sunglasses concealing from Fjord most of his expression and anything that might be on his mind. He followed behind the halfling woman --  _ like a duckling, _  Fjord couldn't help the comparison -- without a word, with a slouched posture and his hands stuck in his topcoat pockets, and Fjord had honestly no idea what he was making of all this.

"Now," the halfling woman -- Veth Brenatto, a publisher from Zadash, she'd been the one to conduct all the arrangements by email -- planted her fists on her hips and turned in a circle, surveying the landscape around the cottage with a doubtful eye. "I'm sure this will be just fine, this place is  _ perfect, _  so quiet and remote -- so rustic and charming, I love it, I really do! -- but are you  _ absolutely sure _  this place is safe?"

"Yes ma'am," Fjord said, not entirely sure how to answer that. "These are good people around here, and people mostly keep to themselves. Most folks don't even bother to lock their doors at night."  Fjord did, but then it wasn't the townsfolk that he was worried about.

Veth pursed her thick lips, looking dubious. "And there's no wild animals around here?" she demanded. "You're  _ sure?" _

"No ma'am," Fjord said. The land out beyond Seeping Springs was mostly undeveloped, but it wasn't that  _ kind _  of undeveloped. The biggest critter he'd ever seen around here was a coyote, and that had been four years ago.

"No gangs?" she demanded. "No drug running cabals? No evil cults? No crazed rednecks lurking in the woods around the lake looking for innocent victims to chop up with chainsaws?"

"Um," Fjord said, at a loss for how to respond.

"I've seen movies, you know. I know how you country people are! Do you know who this is? This is  _ Caleb Widogast, _ bestselling author, he's not just some --"

"Veth," the man said quietly. "I'll be fine."

That turned her attention off of Fjord and onto him, which was fine by Fjord. "I know you will, Caleb," she cooed in a motherly tone of voice. "This is going to be perfect for you, I just know it. You'll have a good quiet week by yourself, settle your mind and get things in order, and when you come back you'll be  _ all ready _  to write that new book. You have your cell phone, don't you? And your laptop? There's food, isn't there?" she demanded, attention shifting back to Fjord in a heartbeat.

"Sure is," Fjord said, greatly relieved that he'd thought to stock the cabin before his guest's arrival. "Water and sandwich fixins in the fridge, fresh fruit from Nila's in the cabinets. If you head back down along Lakeline Drive back towards town, the first store on your right when you get to Main Street is the grocery. They're open from seven to seven 'cept on weekends when it's noon to seven, you can get most things there."

"Is there air conditioning?" Veth interrogated.

Fjord winced. " 'Fraid not," he said. "But it doesn't tend to get too hot down here, along the lakeside. Breezes keep it cool even in the summer."

"But there's electricity?" the man -- Caleb -- said. It was the first time he'd addressed Fjord directly. He shifted uncomfortably, one hand crossing his chest and gripping at a strap that ran under his jacket. It looked not unlike a holster, except that instead of a gun it contained a flat black oblong that Fjord assumed was a laptop case.

"Yup, there's that," Fjord said with a nod. "And a propane heater in the closet, not that I think you'll need that even at night."

"That's all that matters," Caleb said. He held his hand out towards Fjord, sunglass-covered eyes staring somewhat down and off to the side so that it took Fjord a moment to realize what he was asking for. "Keys?"

"Uh," Fjord said, caught a little off guard. "Sure." He fumbled a little in his jeans pockets and produced the small keyring. Two copies of the front door key (and he had another back at the house,) and a small aluminum key that unlocked the propane closet. They were linked on a keychain out of a batch that Jester had acquired for him, a square piece of resin with bright yellow and green stripes and the word YEEHAW! in excited pink font.

He couldn't help but be aware as he handed over the keys that his jeans were as mud-flecked as his boots, and his flannel shirt was stiff with sweat from the morning's work before these two clients had arrived. He felt dirty, rustic and foolish next to the coolly dressed city pair, still wearing the ridiculous belt and ostentatious hat that Jester had him wear for the tourists. Caleb's suit was not only neat and clean but clearly tailored for him, the cut lying perfectly flat against his neckline and the coat tapering down at his waist to leave no excess fabric at all. Compared to the other inhabitants of Seeping Springs Fjord often felt modern and cosmopolitan by contrast -- but standing next to this slick man he had never felt more like a country bumpkin.

"There ya go," he said as he dropped the keys in Caleb's hand; the man drew his hand back quickly to avoid contact and Fjord stifled a pang of annoyance. Caleb was a customer, he had to be polite to customers. "I'm just in the house up the hill up there, feel free to bang on my door if there's an emergency."

Caleb said nothing, but turned back to the cabin and opened the door. He paused in the threshold and took off his sunglasses, turning to tuck them into the pocket of his jacket as he exchanged them for a clear pair of regular glasses, and Fjord found himself struck suddenly breathless.

The sunglasses had obscured the top half of his face but with them gone, he suddenly got a clear view of the man's face, his striking cheekbones and delicate eyebrows. He was clean-shaven but the faintest ginger stubble already shadowed his jawline, even fainter orange freckles dusting his nose and cheeks. Long eyelashes gleamed red in the blaze of sunlight, framing eyes that were the clearest blue color that Fjord had ever seen. Bluer than the lake, bluer than the brassy sky -- blue enough to drown him.

_ Oh no, _  Fjord thought helplessly.

Fjord got only one good look at those astonishing eyes as Caleb glanced in his direction, then turned and went inside without a word. Fjord started to take a step after him, thinking a tour of the cabin might be wanted -- but instead, the door slammed in his face.

He stared at the closed door, momentarily speechless at the flagrant rudeness. Veth, standing by, moved hastily to make an excuse. "Oh, um, don't worry about Caleb, he's like that with everyone," she said nervously. "Well, with most people anyway. It's not personal. It's just -- he's very shy, you know, new people make him nervous. You wouldn't think that such a great and famous writer could be shy, but it's true."

"I'm sure it is," Fjord muttered, eyes burning a hole through the door. 

"He's been under a lot of stress lately," Veth confided in an undertone. "This writer's block, it's just awful. He hasn't written a word in the last eight months. Nothing seems to help. Yeza and I understand, we  _ do, _  but according to the contract he  _ has _  to produce at least  _ something _  by the end of the year or we'll have to let his license lapse, and that would be an  _ awful _  shame. When we saw your ad on the website it looked perfect, just the kind of quiet getaway that these artsy types like so much."

Fjord took a deep breath and made an effort to unclench his jaw. He didn't have to like Caleb, he told himself. He didn't even particularly care if Caleb liked him as long as he was satisfied with the cabin. This cozy lakeside retreat was apparently worth enough for this pair of city slickers to pay enough in fees that even a single week would keep the lights on in the stable through winter. He just had to put up with the man's presence for a week, and then he'd be gone, and hopefully the next tenant would be a little less of an asshole.

"No problem," he said at last, and it came out almost normal. He turned back to Veth and made an  _ after-you _  gesture up the path. "All water under the bridge. Now, is there anything else you'd like to check on before you head on out?"

He put his back to the lakeside cabin, and tried to put thoughts of Caleb behind him. Despite his best efforts to focus elsewhere, thoughts of a pair of blue, blue eyes haunted him all the way back up to the road.

 

* * *

 

 

~tbc...


	4. The Machine Shed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pour one out for Fjord's accent, Jan 2018-July 2019. May it live on in fanfic.

 

You couldn't see the city from here. 

There was nothing in the way, exactly -- nothing between here and there but flat plains and flatter roads. But it was over seventy miles away. Even on the clearest day -- when the wind didn't kick up dust and the sun didn't boil the air into heat visions and the clouds didn't roll in bruised and purple from west to east -- the tops of the tallest office towers didn't quite crest the curving edge of the horizon.

You couldn't see the city from here, even on the clearest day. But you could stare at the horizon for long enough that the air shimmered and your eyes watered and you could pretend, in the wavering mirages, that you were there.

Anywhere was better than here.

Beau took a swig from the bottle in her hand and grimaced, resenting it for being nothing stronger than water. But Molly's was closed at this hour, the tiefling still passed out in his bed after thirteen straight days of working the bar without a break, and Beau wasn't so far fallen that she'd be the kind of redneck who drank vodka out of plastic bottles sitting on the doorstep in the midday sun. Fuck, her parents would never let her live it down.

Not that they were there to see it, off in some time-share in Marquet right now, but the staff were always watching, and Beau knew they reported everything back to her father. That was how they'd found about...

The plastic crinkled in her hand, old and worn enough with enough refills that the resilience had all gone out of it and left it brittle and crackling as paper. Probably poisoning her with BPA or B-Fuck You or whatever the hell they were putting in these things but fuck, it was probably no worse than what she was already doing to her liver anyways.

The worst thing about living in a small town (aside from all the other worst things) was that everybody was up in everybody's business. There were no secrets, only things that people politely pretended not to know about in public (and then gossiped shamelessly about behind your backs.) Everybody knew about the Lionett's delinquent daughter, a lesbian and a dropout and a criminal to top it off. Everybody knew she'd been stealing from her parents' business, and when they finally bothered to come home for more than a few days at a time, of course they found out. 

Everybody knew that one of her buyers had been Toni Lestra, owner of _Lestra's on Lakeline,_ the only bar and restaurant on town. Everybody knew that once their cozy sweetheart deal (partners with benefits Toni had called it, and laughed) was exposed, her parents took it on themselves to harass Toni out of business and out of town. Windows broken, tires slashed, the house on the edge of the springs burned down. Faulty wires in old houses, the fire marshall had said, but the house had been less than twenty years old.

Everybody knew what was really happening, but nobody dared to say anything. The Lionett Winery were the biggest fish in the pond; the biggest landowners, the biggest employers, the richest fucks. They could do what they wanted and nobody would intervene.

In the end Toni had packed up everything she had left and sold  _ Lestra's _ for pennies on the dollar to the only person in town who wasn't in the Lionetts' pocket -- the vagrant tiefling who bussed tables for her part time and slept in the studio above her restaurant. Molly had taken over the bar and never sold another bottle of wine out of it since then. Toni had left Seeping Springs and had never come back, never sent so much as a postcard. Beau missed her almost as much as she hated her sometimes, but never as much of either as she hated herself.

Everybody knew why Toni had left. Everybody knew it had been Beau's fault. Everybody knew that the only reason Beauregard herself didn't end up in jail was that her parents didn't want the shame on their family name. Probably fewer people knew about the nights she'd spent in the cells in Zadash Penitentiary -- not even the juvie wing, the regular pen -- held without bail or charges in an attempt to 'scare her straight' (good luck with  _ that, _   Beau thought with a sneer.) But she'd been pulled out of her senior year of high school two months from graduation, and that had been the end of any kind of talk about college.

Jester had gone on to college. They had made plans to attend together, to take all the same classes and be roomies, and when everything had all gone to shit Jester had offered to stay home if Beau couldn't go. But that was fucking stupid, because it wasn't Jester's fault that Beau had tanked her own future, and she'd urged her friend to go on and make the most of it for both their sakes.

Jester left just like Toni left, just like Keg left, just like all the good ones left eventually, and Beau was still here. Still stuck. Still drinking. Still fucking up the rest of her life.

She could still go. That was the worst part of it, in some ways. She wasn't locked up here, her parents didn't keep guard on her (they would have had to actually want her around for that, probably.) She could take off anytime except for the little detail where she had nowhere to stay, couldn't get anything but the most basic burger-flipping job with no diploma and no degree, on a shitty minimum wage salary which would never pay enough for rent in pricing-crazy Zadash. No credit, so she couldn't even get a place to stay in the first place without her parents to co-sign a lease for her. Which they'd never do.

She could go, if she was willing to be homeless and destitute and alone; and however much she hated life in this rut, she was too much of a coward for that.

A sudden colder gust of wind hit her, interrupting her brooding thoughts, and it was followed a moment later by a noise. The sound started as a low growl, grew to a snarl, then faded away to a muted rumbling as it passed from west to east. Thunder, Beau thought, but the growl never quite went away.

She looked behind her; although the sun was still dazzlingly bright and the sky blue overhead, the western sky was beginning to fill up with dark grey thunderheads. But the growl continued, growing in volume as a dark bead ran along the freeway and then slid onto the offramp leading to Seeping Springs. Too small for a car or truck -- it could only be a motorcycle, although it was hard to make out through the little cloud of dust that it kicked up, creeping along the road in its own private little thunderhead.

Anything that distracted her from her thoughts was worth watching, and Beau tracked the rider kicking up the cloud as it came down off the freeway, looped around the offramp and came up Lakeline. A V2, she estimated by the sound of the engine, though it was hard to tell any more through all the dust. Something a little older, not quite one of the classics but definitely not a modern machine by any road.

The rider broke out of the dust cloud as the motorcycle passed onto the cleaner stretch of road leading up to the ranch's gate. Beau caught sight of a full-face helmet with tinted visor, an impressive set of black leather gear trimmed with white that was rendered beige and grey by the road dust. The steel-tipped boots were worn and scarred, the leather chaps coated with the dust of a long ride. Beau wondered idly how long they'd been on the road -- there was nothing to the west of here for a hundred miles of open country. The rider came all the way up to the gate and stopped, kicking out the stand and turning the engine to idle; they stepped down onto the road and Beau could see for the first time how tall they were, standing taller than the six-foot gate. Behind them on the bike Beau got a glimpse of two weather-beaten canvas packs strapped to the panniers, and an angle on what looked like a shotgun holstered smoothly behind the saddle. She craned her neck, unashamedly nosy, trying to figure out what all was in there -- 

\-- And found herself riveted -- going in an instant from idly curious into sudden deer-in-the-headlights enthralled -- as the helmet came off and a river of dark curls cascaded down from the helmet. The rider's hair was dark as night, shot through with streaks of white that flashed like lightning as her hair tumbled over her shoulders -- the skin of her face and throat glowed in contrast, heavy dark makeup on her lips and cheekbones and eyes. 

"Yash!" Fjord's voice came from up the slope and the half-orc came striding quickly down the road to the gate, reaching out to hit the switch to open it. The biker woman smiled and wheeled her bike forward as the gate slid open, and she and Fjord clasped hands in the driveway while Beau goggled from her vantage on the porch.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," Fjord was saying as the two of them came up the drive. "I didn't know you were comin' into town tonight, but I'm glad to have you. You just made it, there's supposed to be a storm rolling in before too long."

"I know," the woman said in a soft alto voice that barely drifted up to Beau's ears. "I rode in ahead of it."

Fjord nodded. "Well, let's find you a place to bunk tonight, and hopefully it will roll right on through," he said. "I don't know how long you can stay, but the reel on the baler has been bust for months. It hasn't been such a big deal since we haven't had much to harvest, but with all these changes Jester wants us to make..."

"I'm going to see Molly first, but I'll have a look tomorrow," Yasha promised. "Rain or no rain."

The two of them passed down the drive past Beau's perch, and Fjord's eye caught on her. He tilted his head back, one hand on the brim of his hat to keep it from whipping off in the rising wind. "Beau, can you get the horses back undercover before the storm hits?" he called. "I was giving the Morgans some yard time, but it looks like we'll be cuttin' that short."

"Uh --" More than anything Beau wanted to stay where she was, or go along with the intriguing newcomer -- but she also wanted to make a good impression on this formidable-looking woman, and that  _ probably _   wouldn't be best served by telling her boss to go fuck himself. "Sure, I'll get right on it!"

Then of course she had to climb down from the wall and head back towards the horse barn while Fjord and the newcomer -- Yash? -- went in the other direction. "New barn hand?" the woman's surprisingly soft voice came from behind her. "I don't think I've met this one before."

"She's a good egg," Fjord replied, and Beau didn't get to stay and eavesdrop on the rest of the conversation, damn. She went to see about the Morgans.

  
  


* * *

 

The storm did hit sooner, chasing Beau back home through drumming rain and streets washed out by shallow floods without seeing another soul. She didn't catch up to Fjord until the next day, squelching her way back to the ranch through puddles reflecting shining blue sky in their fresh silver faces.

The machine shed was wide open, several of the engines driven out to make room inside the shed for the newcomer to work. Her leather jacket was slung over a peg by the door and Beau could make out some of the details now: matte black leather that had been mended with grey and white stripes where it had torn, leaving jagged streaks of lightness through the pattern. Even those were almost completely hidden by a multitude of patches that were sewn onto the breast panels, the back, the arms, pretty much everywhere. Beau had no idea where any of them were from, but maybe she could ask.

The biker woman --  _ Yash -- _ stood in the middle of the machine shed, the offending baler rucked up on a chain hoist to give her access to its interior. Her dark hair was tied up and back in a criss-cross of ties and hairbands in order to keep it out of her face, which was stormy with a frown of concentration as her mismatched eyes focused on her work. She seemed to be wearing the same clothes as the night before, though somewhat cleaner. Under the leather jacket was a grey sleeveless top whose hems were fraying, seams straining now as her arms and shoulders bulged with the weight of the panel she was lifting off.

"Ah-hmm."  A soft cough drew Beau out of what was rapidly becoming a fascinated trance, and she jumped near out of her skin. Whipping her head around she saw Fjord a few feet away, heavy gloves on his hands as he worked with a pile of jumbled metal, trying to separate the good metal from the rusted scrap. 

Beau felt herself flush at having been caught ogling, but she recovered quickly. "Soo...." she said, letting the word draw out. "You've been holding out on me, Fjord. You never said you knew wild hot biker mechanic ladies."

Fjord chuckled. "Yasha's something special," he agreed, and Beau mentally corrected her file:  _ Yasha, _   not Yash. The name felt right, felt soft on her tongue as she practiced mouthing it. "I actually knew her through Molly first. The two of them used to run with the circus together, but when it fell apart Molly settled down here and Yasha took off."

Beau nodded, resolving to pin down Molly at the first opportunity and squeeze all the info she could out of him. Fjord was closer, though. "So, what's the score on her?" she asked. "A lady with a jacket and a ride like that, huh. Does she like girls? Is she single? Should I make a move?"

Fjord sighed. "You know, I shoulda guessed you'd ask that as soon as you laid eyes on her," he said.  She smirked; he knew her well. He took off his hat and ran his hand over his hair, looking harried. "Yes to the first, I can tell you that much. For the other two... it's complicated."

Beau's smirk dropped; that was  _ not _   what she'd been hoping to hear. "Complicated? For fuck's sake Fjord, either she's single or she's not."

"It ain't my story to tell," Fjord said firmly. "Yasha's had some tough patches in her life, she's got a lot of rough road under her wheels... I can tell you that your usual strategy of love'em and leave'em isn't going to work here."

"Then what will work?" Beau demanded.

"Hell if I know," Fjord said with a shrug. Beau scowled and jabbed him with an elbow for that  _ singularly _ unhelpful response. He jumped and winced, rubbing his ribs. "But if you want an answer to your question? Ask  _ her. _   Talk to her, get to know her, and maybe she'll tell you her story. Try being her friend."

Beau mulled that over. "I'm shit at friends, Fjord, you know that," she admitted in a low voice.

"You're a better friend than you think," Fjord returned. "And from what I know of Yasha, she could always use another."   


A raucous clatter drew their attention into the barn, and they looked to see Yasha leap backwards as a cascade of sharp metal clattered down on the place where she'd just been standing. The tall woman frowned down at the sheared-off bolt in her hand, and in a surprisingly calm voice said,  _ "Mother _ fuck."

Beau was in love.

"Tell you what," Fjord said, straightening up from his crouch and putting a hand on his back to stretch it out. He stripped off the heavy work gloves and held them out to Beau. "Why don't you take over here, see if you can get Yasha what she needs to work. Give you a little time to get to know each other."

"Thanks, Fjord," Beau said, accepting the stained and sweaty gloves with eagerness. "You're a bro. Lemme know if I can make it up to you somehow, play wingman for ya in return."

He put his hat back on and tipped it in her direction as he stepped out of the shed back into the sunlight. "I just might do that."

 

* * *

 

 

~tbc...


	5. The Horse Barn

  
  


Anyone who used the phrase "healthy as a horse," Fjord decided, had never been tasked with trying to keep horses healthy.

There was a whole passel of animals on the ranch when you stopped to round them all up. A handful of cows still -- didn't produce enough to sell commercially, but they still needed to be fed and milked and wrangled. Double handful of chickens, same deal. A mishmash of goats, rabbits and other critters that Jester had gleefully claimed for their  _ petting zoo, _ once they got the kinks of that plan worked out. But the whole lot of them together didn't give Fjord so much trouble as the half-a-dozen or so horses.

Thankfully they had a veterinarian on retainer, Caduceus Clay, who came round every second Wednesday as part of the wider loop he made to serve all the farms around the area. He'd been in yesterday to look over the Connemara ponies; Peaches had an abscess and Trixie had been limping. Caduceus had treated the first with antibiotics and diagnosed the second to nothing worse than a strained tendon, thanks be. He'd filled out the invoice and been on his way, but the very next morning one of the Morgans had come down with a colic.

Colics in horses were as common as tornadoes in summer, but they were no less serious for all their frequency; a colic could range in seriousness from an unpleasant stomachache and round of gas for the horse all the way up to foundering and  _ death _ , and there was no way to tell which was which from the outside. Fjord had called Caduceus up with an urgent plea to return, and Wildmother be thanked, he had.

Thankfully, if exasperatingly, the colic turned out to be the uncomfortable-not-dangerous variety, and Tomeytine had gone from whinneying in pain and rolling on the ground in an attempt to ease his discomfort to nosing contentedly into Caduceus' hand. Fjord would suspect Caduceus of slipping the horse treats to ensure its affection but no, the firbolg just had that effect on animals.

"Now, we know better than to eat those fronds again, right?" Caduceus asked, grabbing the horse's ears as he looked directly into its eyes. The horse whickered and tossed his head out of the vet's grip, but Caduceus smiled as though he had voiced assent. "Great. That's nice. Then take it easy for the next couple of days and you should be all healed up. See you in two weeks, okay?"

The horses tried to follow Caduceus out of the stable, and Fjord had to collar them firmly back into the barn before he could catch up with Caduceus, washing his hands under the sluice pump. "Thanks for coming back, Cad," he said, a little out of breath from wrestling with the large animals.

Caduceus smiled. "It was no problem," he said. "I'm just glad I was close enough to make it back so quickly. You take good care of these animals, you know."

"I try," Fjord said, shyness making him a little gruff. He sometimes felt a little shamed that he didn't quite vibe with animals the way Caduceus did, but he supposed that was the difference between someone who'd chosen a life working with animals and someone who'd fallen into it by accident. No matter how it had come about, the animals were his charge now, and he'd be damned if he let anything happen to them on his watch.

Caduceus nodded as he took a towel out of his pockets to dry his hands, then tucked it away. Fjord glanced up at the sun, then his watch. "You need me to put you up?" he inquired. "I can get the guest room ready, if it's too late to get back on the road..."

"No, I think I can get to Kamordah in good time," Caduceus said comfortably. "I've got a few obligations there tomorrow, so I really ought not to overnight here. But thank you for the kindness, Mr. Fjord."

"Hell, it's the least I can do after dragging you out here two days in a row," Fjord said. "You all settled up?" Thankfully the sick horse had been one of those stabled here by boarders, and they would be covering the medical costs; he would have paid it either way, but at least asking the question didn't make him flinch.

"I think so," Caduceus said. "I'll just stop by Molly's for a quick one before I head out."

"Oh?" Fjord said, a bit surprised. "I didn't think you drank." Caduceus had always radiated wholesome, tea-totaling energy, but Fjord would be the first to admit that looks could be deceiving.

"Oh, I don't," Caduceus said.

There was a beat as Fjord, confused, waited for Caduceus to elaborate, and then another as he realized all at once that he didn't really need him to. He coughed, then cleared his throat to try to disguise the sudden flush of heat in his cheeks (which thankfully, his skin didn't tend to show) to move past the moment. "Well, don't let me keep you back," he said hurriedly. "I'll buzz you out, okay?"

After Caduceus left Fjord took a moment to linger by the horse barn, leaning up against the fence with his arms folded. There were plenty more chores back at the house to keep him occupied, but he didn't have to run to them just yet; he'd allowed plenty more time to deal with the colicky horse than he'd ended up needing. It felt good just to rest for a moment, basking in the sun's warmth without baking in the force of its heat. Autumn was coming to Felderwin, the nights beginning to bring a biting chill, but in the late afternoon it was warm and pleasant.

Fjord wasn't the only one enjoying the warmth. Where the golden sun slanted against the west side of the horse barn he spotted one of the barn cats -- a marmalade tabby -- rolling around on a yellowing patch of grass, clearly enjoying the warmth and the soft surface. From one of the small square windows set into the barn wall, fitted with screens but no glass, he saw a second feline shape lurking. Fjord didn't know how a creature could manage to make so innocent an activity as sunbathing into a promise of malevolent menace, but this cat managed it. All of the barn cats were  _ tame, _   though none of them were exactly  _ pets; _ they were employees, just like him. Fjord left food out and built shelters for the cold months and in return the cats kept the vermin level down. The tabby was friendly to people, the rugged cream-and-orange tuxedo was not -- but they both did their jobs, so Fjord did his best to keep a truce.

His idle cat-watching was interrupted when a new challenger entered the scene; a figure appeared round the far corner of the barn and walked slowly towards the cats. When he saw he'd caught their attention the man crouched down, extending his hand and making soft, coaxing overtures towards the ginger tabby.

It was none other than Caleb Widogast, Fjord realized with surprise. The city-boy look had softened considerably; the only piece of his original outfit Fjord recognized were his black slacks, now dusty and shabby and not at all creased. Other than that he wore a pair of soft moccasins that Fjord thought he recognized from off the rack at the general store and a loose white button-down shirt with its collar opened and sleeves rolled up in the soft heat. A pair of black suspenders striped his front and joined to a Y in back that framed his shoulders and waist almost as well as that coat had done. He was unshaven, his hair loose and unbrushed, and his hands and face bore a faint patina of grime.

He was also, as far as Fjord knew, supposed to have left thirteen days ago. His publisher had only rented the place for a week -- yes,  _ a week to get your head clear, _   she'd insisted -- and that had been two and a half weeks earlier. What was the man still  _ doing _ here?

Petting Fjord's barn cats, apparently. The ginger tabby went over to him without much coaxing and rubbed up and down across Caleb's extended hand. The man's expression softened from its usual tight-pinched furrow into something gentler, and the whole look of him -- crouched in the sunbeam with his hand extended, an almost-smile playing on his lips -- gave Fjord another dangerous lurch to the chest.

When Caleb moved on from petting the ginger tabby towards the tuxedo, though, Fjord thought he'd better intervene. The ginger tabby was friendly towards people, but the tuxedo was another matter. Maybe-trespasser or not, nobody deserved the faceful of slashing claws that cat usually returned for any overtures. Fjord pushed himself up from the fence and gave an almost apologetic cough.

Caleb's head came up, a startled look on his face as he realized he was not alone, but relaxed again at the sight of Fjord. He straightened up from his crouch, bringing his hands back to rub on the thighs of his already-mussed trousers, and gave him a nod. "Mister Fjord," he said, his soft accent still catching Fjord a little by surprise. "I, ah, I hope I was not bothering your cats."

"Don't mind if you were," Fjord said with a shrug, "except that I don't want that one taking exception to you tryin'. The tabby's friendly enough -- could have been a housecat if he didn't insist on going outside to piss -- but that fat one's a right bastard. Left scars on a couple of the stablehands. But he's good at his job, so we have an understanding."

"That is fair enough," Caleb allowed. He stood a bit awkwardly for a moment, rubbing his hands together and not-quite-looking Fjord in the eye, before he said abruptly "Do they have names?"

"Not really," Fjord said, leaning back against the post once more. "Not like they come when called, anyway. If anything we usually call the little one Frumpy and the big one Bastard."

"That seems to fit them," Caleb said, laughing softly. 

The sound did something funny to Fjord's insides and he barely managed to swallow down his next sally of  _ So, you like cats? _   into a less welcoming, but more practical "Now I don't mind the cats, but mind telling me what you're doin' here?"

Caleb blinked at him, blue eyes wide and disarming. "Ah... you did say that the ranch was just up the road if I needed anything. It is not exactly an emergency, but..."

"No, no," Fjord waved. "Not bein' here specifically. I just mean, uh, in Seeping Springs gen'rally. Weren't you headed back to the city after a week in the cabin?"

"Oh." Caleb looked back down at the ground, rubbing nervously at the fingers of his right hand with his left. "I thought... I decided to stay longer. You should have received an email from Veth renewing my -- my rental period."

He probably had gotten the email, whoops. He got so many emails regarding management of the ranch that he tended to skim them, and he vaguely remembered an email from Jester with the subject 'That cute writer boy in the cabin!!' from a week back. Which left  _ him _   the stupid one, again. Well, he was glad he hadn't opened up this conversation with a shotgun, at least. 

He couldn't say he minded having the cabin rented out (and  _ especially _   not rented out by  _ this particular _   tenant, a little voice whispered) but he still felt a little wrong-footed. "Can I ask why?" he said. "I mean, it's a cosy enough place for a week of camping, but... wasn't really meant for long-term occupancy. Not comfortably, anyway."

"It is comfortable enough," Caleb said.

"I mean, it's good enough for me but can't hardly be comfortable for a city boy like you," Fjord went on. He was a little surprised by how long this conversation had gone on, given how truncated their first meeting had been.

Caleb went still, and turned his head very slowly to face Fjord. "A city boy," he said. "Is that what I look like?"

All at once Fjord realized he'd misstepped. All of the soft, open animation that he'd surprised on Caleb's face looking at the cats had dried up, leaving his face as still and closed as the first time they had met. Until he'd seen him open and relaxed Fjord hadn't realized how tight and tense he'd been in their first meeting.

"Well," he said, trying to bridge over the awkward moment, "pretty much anyplace is city compared to here."

Caleb let out a soft snort and looked away. Fjord couldn't tell whether his backpedaling had managed to smooth over the rough patch or not; Caleb was damn hard to read.

"It is comfortable enough," he repeated. 

The conversation stumbled there, and Fjord wondered if he should claim farm chores (wouldn't even be a lie, sadly) and run off. Before he could quite work up the nerve, though, Caleb spoke again.

"I was only supposed to stay for a week, you are correct," he said at last. "To try to clear my head, to try to... This was just the latest in a long line of things Veth has set up, to try to help me, and I did not think it was doing me any good. All week. But then on Sunday, the day before I was to have gone home, I sat down at my computer and wrote nine thousand words."

Fjord tried to mentally convert that to a number of pages, then gave up; tried also to work out the subtle emotions lacing around Caleb's words there, then gave that up too. "Is that... a lot?" he said.

Caleb let out a dry chuckle, barely voiced. "That is more in a day than I have been able to write in two years altogether."

"Oh. So that  _ is _   a lot," Fjord said. Impressed despite himself. Who'd have thought that the lakeside cabin had that kind of inspiring power? It had certainly never inspired him, except for some hope that he could put it to better use than Sabien had. 

"I don't know what it is about this place --" Caleb waved a hand vaguely back over his shoulder, encompassing the cabin, the lake, the whole town in one broad gesture. "-- that has cleared the shadows from my mind. But here I will stay, until my book is complete. Veth should have re-upped the payment, did she not?"

"Uh... I'll have to check," Fjord temporized. He'd have to check to make sure that payment had gone through, and for that matter take down the ad that had gone back up on the website. At least no one else had applied to stay in the cabin in the meantime, so he wouldn't have to deal with angry potential customers. "Well -- I'm real happy for you, breakin' that writer's block and all. If there's anything else you need, now that you'll be staying longer, feel free to ask."

"No. I need nothing." That curtness was back, the cold clipped tone that Fjord had first assumed was city-rudeness, but was maybe just plain day rudeness. After a moment, though, Caleb unclenched his jaw enough to add, "Thank you."

"Weren't nothing." Fjord tipped his hat in a nod to Caleb, turned, and went off around the corner of the barn. Caleb might be sure that he  _ needed nothing, _   but the same couldn't be said for the thousand and one other little things on the ranch that were calling for his attention.

All right, so things could be worse. The city slicker was sticking around, so Fjord would have to put up with him for however long it took until his  _ book _   was complete. But it was still good money for damn little investment, given that the man had apparently been hanging around the ranch for a good week before Fjord had even noticed him. If wandering around the barn trying to tame the barn cats was what inspired him, who was Fjord to judge?

He'd just have to keep checking in to make sure that the glum man hadn't drowned himself in the lake by accident. Or on purpose. This Caleb Widogast fellow couldn't be any harder to keep alive than the damn fool horses.

 

* * *

 

 

~tbc...


	6. The Bar, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beau goes looking for trouble, and finds her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is entirely focused on the girls, Beau's clumsy attempts at flirting and the stone wall that is Yasha. Enjoy.
> 
> Slight warnings in this chapter for consumption of alcohol and discussion of violence, including references to child abuse.

 

Out on the plains the Halfling Summer -- late and warm and golden all out of season -- could fool you, Beau thought as she made her way down the lane off the ranch back towards town. The sky had stayed bright and brassy well into Fessuran and the temperatures still hovered in the high 80s even as the days shortened and the nights crept up on you. It might still feel like summer by the heat, but the light gave testament to the coming winter.

Well, colder temperatures would come soon enough. For now it was enough that the nights actually cooled off from the day's heat instead of retaining a lingering stickiness, the ground giving back waves of warmth even long after the sun had set. For now you could leave your window open in the evening, let the fresh air come through along with the endless drone of cicadas.

The last of the sunset made a ribbon of color against the horizon, yellow and green against the black of the ground, and the stars were out overhead. The lights along main street seemed small against the deepening dark, each building picked out in pools of light with dark stretches of road between them. Sodium yellow and magnesium white -- the only splash of color along the road was the gentle lambent neon of Molly's. Red and purple lights glowed off the whitewashed walls as Beau left the sidewalk and crunched over the gravel parking lot, stepping up over the curb to the place that was as familiar as her second home.

Some differences. There was an enormous Harley parked just outside the main door and when Beau pushed open the screen -- didn't bother to knock, never did -- the lights were on inside, but the tiefling was nowhere to be seen. Instead Yasha stood behind the bar, leaning hip-slung against the edge of it with her jacket spread over the side, a silver needle flashing in and out as she did some small mending.

Beau hesitated. She'd come to Molly's hoping to see Yasha again, but she'd expected Molly to be here too, and Yasha on the other side of the bar. And not sewing. Her hesitation gave Yasha enough time to glance up from her work, mismatched eyes pinning Beau in the doorway.

"You're Beau," Yasha said after a moment of awkward silence. As before her voice was surprisingly soft for such a big woman, such a rough presence.

"Uhhh," Beau said, then coughed as she tried to get hold of herself. "Yeah. Fjord told you about me?"

Yasha shrugged. "Some," she said. "Molly told me you might be coming by, too."

"Where is Molly, anyway?" 

"He's taking a break," Yasha answered. "I offered to watch the bar for him in case anyone came in."

Beau sneered. "What do you mean, take a break? Not like he ever works anyhow," she scoffed.

It was a joke. She and Molly traded barbs like it all the time, back and forth in her many hours at the bar, burning each other for their respective dead-end lives in this dead-end town. Molly teased Beau for being a drop-out; Beau jibed Molly for having no schooling at all. They both sniped at each other for not having respectable full-time employment. But at Beau's caustic words towards -- she suddenly realized -- Yasha's good friend, the biker woman's expression grew a little more cold and closed.

"So, uh," Beau cleared her throat, sliding up to the bar. She took a seat not opposite Yasha, but a few stools down. "Don't suppose you could pour one for me? Just so the evening's not a total loss for Molly."

"Sure," Yasha said, then after a beat, "What do you want?"

Beau set her elbow on the bar and rested her chin on her fist, allowing a filthy grin to spread over her face. She'd been waiting _all day_   for a chance to use this line. "From you?" she said. "How 'bout a slow, comfortable screw up against a cold hard wall with a kiss?"

Yasha stared at her. Beau's lecherous smile faltered, and she buckled. "It's, uh, it's a drink," she admitted. "Vodka, sloe gin, orange juice and southern comfort, that's the first part. Then white overproof rum and galliano for a Harvey Wallbanger make it up against a wall, and ice makes it cold, yeah? Then a float of amaretto for the kiss."

Yasha stared some more. Beau began to sweat. "I got gin," the biker woman said at last, after an interminable silence.

"What the hell." Beau sighed. "I'll have gin."

Yasha pulled up a glass and poured from a bottle, and Beau took it, handing over a wad of bills in exchange. She could have knocked it back in one shot but instead she nursed it, not that Shandal Sapphire East didn't deserve at least a little consideration. More to the point, it gave her an excuse to stay and talk to Yasha.

She'd come here tonight to try to grill Molly about his _hot biker friend,_  but Molly was nowhere to be seen -- since when did Molly take nights off, anyway? -- and instead she had the object of her interest all to herself. Damn. Beau had hoped for more time and material to prepare, but she couldn't let this opportunity pass. 

 Beau cleared her throat and went for it. "So, you're a biker?" she said.

"Yes," Yasha said.

Beau waited a beat, but no more answer seemed to be forthcoming. She tried a smirk. "I bet the chicks like that, huh?" she said. "Got one in every port, all that?"

Yasha just stared.

 _Damn, she's a wall!_  Beau thought, the smirk sliding off her face. This was not going well. None of her usual pickup lines seemed to be working. She cast around for something, anything to talk about that might get more of a response from the woman. "So, uh, I noticed the patches on your jacket," she said, pointing to the garment that Yasha had been repairing when she'd come in. "They look cool."

"Thanks," Yasha said.

Okay. One word, that was better than wordless staring. Beau tried again. "Do they mean anything?" she said. There were so many, all so different, and while some looked cool others looked downright dorky. They had to have meaning, since she surely wouldn't have picked them for their looks. 

"Yes," Yasha allowed, her words coming slow and considering. "They all mean things."

"What's this big one mean?" Beau said, gesturing towards the biggest and most visible one: A large set of black wings outlined in silver thread was centered on the back of the jacket, stylized black feathers sprouting out from the spine over the shoulder blades. Secretly, Beau had always wished for a jacket as cool as that one.

"That's my wolf patch," Yasha replied. She pulled her thread out of the jacket and tied it off, then picked the garment up and lay it flat on the bar, showing the wings off to their full spread.

Beau's brow wrinkled and she looked at it more closely, trying to pick out the wolf in the design. "Your... wolf has wings?" she tried.

"No," Yasha said. "It's not a club patch, which tells other bikers I'm not part of a club. Those are called lone wolves."

"Cool," Beau said. Secretly she wasn't sure whether to be disappointed that Yasha wasn't part of a club, or find that even more cool and exciting than if she was. One thing that was impossible to miss was the size and placement of the shiny chrome rings on the jacket pockets, which at least confirmed to her that Fjord had been right about Yasha's preferences. Her eyes wandered to another part of the jacket, a diamond-shaped patch on the shoulder with a bar across it saying 1%. "What's this one?"

"That means I'm a one percenter," Yasha replied.

Beau blinked. "What, so you're rich?"

Yasha snorted. Beau wasn't sorry to have made her laugh, but wished it was for something other than Beau saying something stupid. "No, pretty much the opposite of that," she said. "Ninety-nine percent of bikers are registered with the Wildemount Motorcycle Association. The ones who aren't are considered... outlaws, I guess you could say. I'm not registered with the WMA, so... one percenter."

"Right," Beau said. She spotted another patch, this one with a familiar logo, and couldn't help the excitement that rose up in her at the sight. "Hey, you're a fan of Vox Machina too? Have you seen them live?!"

"What?" Yasha blinked, then looked down at the patch, the stylized letters 'VM' inside each other surrounded by a border of braided leaves. "Oh, yeah, that. I was in Emon a few years ago and a friend put out a call that a band was doing a show in the area and they needed roadies who could carry the gear and help with set-up."

"You were a roadie for _Vox Machina?"_   Beau could hardly believe her ears. Vox Machina had provided the soundtrack for her teenage years (and the Voice of the Machine, Keyleth Ashari, had been her breakout lesbian crush.) She'd tracked their tours across Wildemount -- in fact she thought she could name the location and date of this particular concert exactly -- but had never had a chance to go see them live.

Yasha nodded. "I didn't actually hear much of the concert, since I was out by the trucks," she reminisced. "But they invited me to the afterparty, and the guitarist drank me under the table." 

"You had a drinking contest with _Grog Strongjaw?"_   Beau half-whispered.

"No, the other one, the little one with white hair." For the first time since meeting her Beau saw a smile pass over her face. "She was tough. When I woke up the next morning Gilmore gave me the patch, said I'd earned it for keeping up with Pike Trickfoot."

Beau gulped, struggling to keep her cool and not give vent to the embarrassing reactions that wanted to spill out. She had to be cool, damn it, it wasn't sexy or alluring to babble like a thirteen-year-old fangirl at a boy band concert.  "Oh, that's cool, cool cool cool," she said, and looked for a way to change the subject. She moved on to another patch on the jacket, pointing at one almost at random. "What's this one from?"

Yasha looked. "That one, hm, think they handed these out to those of us who stayed all three days at the oil pipeline blockade," she said. 

That rang only a fainter bell in Beau's head. "The... water protectors?" she tried.

"Yeah."

"Nice," Beau nodded. She leaned in and scanned the jacket and her eyes fell on another patch, proudly worn on the outer face of the upper arm. It was a face-on view of a fist with the letters B.A.C.A spelled out on the knuckles. "Baca?" she asked.

"Bikers Against Child Abuse," Yasha said, and a touch of quiet pride colored her voice. 

"That's a thing?" Beau's eyebrows went up.

"Oh, yeah," Yasha said, completely serious. "We go to court dates with kids so that they don't have to face their abusers alone. Mostly it's the lines -- you know, blocking the line of sight between the kid and their abuser -- but it's not just that. The point, more than anything else, is that we let the kids know they don't need to be scared. These kids -- their whole world has been shaped by fear. So we fight that fear.

"If they need us, no matter where, no matter when -- some of us will be available to go stand by them. Whether that's at court, or at school, or standing guard outside their homes if we have to." Her expression darkened with some memory. "Some assholes can't fucking control themselves, they don't respect the law, they don't respect restraining orders. The only thing they understand is force. So we make sure they know. That it's one thing to beat up on a helpless child, but another thing to do it when there are four of us standing behind him. And we make sure the kids know -- there's someone out there that's scarier than the assholes who hurt them. And that we're on _their_   side."

"Wow." Beau stared down at the fist and felt a completely unexpected rush of emotion. The speed and strength of it surprised her, and she tried to push it down, tried not to look too hard at where it was coming from or what it was made of. _Their whole world has been shaped by fear._   No, that wasn't her, she wasn't afraid. She fucking _hated_ them, that wasn't the same as being afraid. She managed to get her voice almost steady when she said, "That's. That's amazing. Uh. That's, that's just a really great thing that you do. Wow."

Yasha looked at her in silence for a long moment, long enough for Beau to wonder if her makeup was running or something. "You know," she said. "It doesn't stop when the kids hit 18, either. As long as you're a BACA kid we'll always be there for them, whenever they need us. As long as they get their level ones when they're still a kid, they'll always be one of us."

"That's great." Beau shoved aside a surge of wild emotion -- bitterness, resentment, regret. _Too late for me._   "Like I said, really great. What's this one?"

Yasha stared at her for a moment longer, but at last allowed her eyes to drop back to the jacket. "Time served," she said as she looked where Beau was pointing. "Eighteen months, Zadash General, assault and battery."

"They give patches for _that?!"_   Beau boggled. She'd always thought that spending time in jail was something you had to hide, by any means possible -- once it was on your record it would never come off, and no one would ever hire you again. "That's, uh, wow. What happened with that?"

Yasha shrugged. "Working a line between a thirteen year old kid and his shithole dad," she said. "The shithole kept saying that we couldn't keep him from his _property._ Seemed to think that we were bluffing when we told him we _could_." A small cold smile ticked up the corner of Yasha's mouth, the hardest expression Beau had seen on her yet. "I wasn't bluffing."

"Wow," Beau said again. She hesitated, swallowed, then blurted out, " _I_ didn't get a patch. For. Being in jail. Just uh, just, uh. You know."

Her voice trailed off. She wasn't sure _what_   she was trying to say, talking about her stint in prison, revealing her worst-kept secret to a total stranger. Did she think that a few days in jail for petty crimes was going to _impress_   this juggernaut of a woman, for fuck's sake? Or was it that she just wanted to tell someone -- anyone -- who wouldn't care, who wouldn't judge her for it like everyone else in this fucking town did?

"Well, they don't hand the patches out at the jailhouse," Yasha said wryly. "The other guys in BACA made it for me, gave it to me when I got out. It's all about the getting out, you know, and what sort of support you receive on the other side, that makes it worth it. Or not."

"Yeah I guess," Beau said. "But I guess it also makes you look, like, dangerous. Like, ooh, this girl is badass, people don't wanna mess with you when they see this patch."

Yasha shrugged. Beau ran her finger down the seam of the jacket, where surprisingly delicate thread had embroidered a spray of flowers winding up from the hem. "So if that one is for assault and battery, what's this about?" she said. "Doesn't look very badass. Unless, oh, is this about drugs? Like, poppies stand for heroin, that sort of thing?"

"No," Yasha said, and her voice suddenly returned to that stone-cold, dust-dry tone from when the conversation had started. Beau hadn't even realized how much she'd been opening up until she was closed again.

Beau took her hand off the jacket as if it had burned her. "Uh -- sorry --" she stammered.

"I like flowers," Yasha said.

The conversation stalled. Yasha picked up the jacket and shrugged it around her shoulders again. As she turned it over, Beau caught a flash of one more patch, this one fixed to the inside of the placket instead of the outside, and upside-down. She tilted her head and leaned forward to see it, drawn in despite herself. It looked like a stylized angel, the sort you saw on christmas cards or ornaments, except fashioned out of iron with rusting bolts along the wings. "What's that?" she blurted out.

Yasha paused in mid-motion, her eyes and hand drifting down to the reversed patch. "That's my club patch," she said in a soft voice.

"Wait, I thought you said you weren't in a club?"

"I'm not. Anymore." Yasha frowned down at it, not meeting Beau's eyes. "This was... from a long time ago. From right after I left home.  

"The Angels, they were... not nice people. There are a lot of clubs, even 'outlaw' clubs that are perfectly fine, they just want to go their own way, they don't hurt anyone. Then there are the Iron Angels. They... hurt a lot of people. And so did I when I was with them. I _wanted_   to, then. But after a while I didn't want to anymore. And you can't be with the Angels if you don't like hurting people. So I left."

"Oh," Beau said, daunted. "Then -- why keep the patch, if you don't wanna be part of them any more?"

Yasha shrugged. "I guess... because they'll always be a part of me," she said at last. "I might want to forget them. I might want to forget me, when I was with them. But I can't. The things I've done, they can't be undone. I carry the patch to remind me of my mistakes, so I don't do them again."

Beau swallowed against a dry throat. Must be the gin, she thought. "Funny... I don't have much trouble remembering mistakes that I've made," she said. "If I forget, there's always something to remind me. Leaving my mistakes behind, now that might be worth a patch."

Yasha said nothing. After a long time, she nodded at the mostly-empty glass that Beau was still nursing. "Want another?" she said.

"Nah." Beau set the glass down and pushed away from the counter. The atmosphere had gotten too heavy, and she needed some space. Some time to think, to put things back in their boxes that this conversation had stirred up. "I should be heading home. It's gonna be a long walk up the hill."

"It's after dark," Yasha agreed. "Will... do you have people back home who will be waiting for you?"

Beau let out a bark of laughter at that. "Nah," she said, and shook out her own coat around her. "But thanks for the drink. And the talk. It was real good. Let's talk again sometime, yeah?" _That's right Beau, keep it cool, don't be desperate. Even if you totally are._

"Wait," Yasha said as Beau started for the door. She turned around to see the big woman moving around behind the bar, quickly pouring things into a metal carafe and then shaking it up with a clatter of ice. She strained it into a glass and pushed it across the bar towards Beau. "One for the night. You look like you could use it."

"Thanks," Beau said automatically, and Yasha gave her another small smile before disappearing around the bar into the back.

Beau sniffed the drink curiously before taking a swig. The sweet, creamy taste burst across her tongue and she froze, automatically parsing the flavors and liquors that went into it. _Vodka, coffee liqueur, amaretto, Irish Cream..._   

Yasha had mixed her a Screaming Orgasm. And if she knew what went into that, that meant she knew perfectly well what Beau had been asking for at the beginning of the night, too -- she'd just chosen to fuck with her about it. And she wanted Beau to know that she knew.

"Son of a bitch," Beau groaned. She knocked the rest of the drink back, clapped the empty glass back on the bar, and walked out into the night.

She had a lot to think about.

 

* * *

 

 

~tbc...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of the biker stuff in here; I did some reading up on it, but some things are bound to be wrong and it's fantasy biker stuff anyway. But BACA is real, and just about as cool as it sounds, if you want to read up on it [here.](http://bacaworld.org/)


	7. The Ranch, Part II

For the next couple of weeks Fjord didn't have much thought or time to spare for his boarder. The long Halfling Summer had come to an end, and with the oncoming of colder weather came the harvest. The ranch he'd inherited from Vandren didn't grow enough to compete with the bigger industry ranches, but there was still a mighty volume of things that had to be taken in before the bad weather really hit.

On Jester's advice Fjord had cordoned off some of the orchard -- the more scenic-looking parts with the nicely attractive trees -- and opened up an apple-picking event, which brought in more folks from the city than he'd expected. There were also a few blackberry rows that he felt confident could get the same treatment, although people seemed disappointed that there were no strawberries to go with -- he hadn't planned ahead for this when he'd been sectioning things out this past spring. Next year, maybe there'd be strawberries. For this year it was more than enough just herding the tourists through the stands of apple and pear trees.

Of course, a few busloads of tourists with arm baskets didn't nearly account for the whole volume that had to be taken in. There were also a few fields of alfalfa -- no tourists interested in picking those, no surprise -- and canola, and corn to harvest, although this year he was leaving the cornstalks standing long enough to arrange for corn-mazes and hayrides in the last of the fine fall weather. ( _ "Call it a  _ **maize maze** _ , Fjord, c'mon, it's right there!" _   Jester had chirped and Fjord had just sighed.)

The lot of it kept Fjord out in the fields for long hours. Yasha helped -- she always did when she was in town around the harvest -- but the usual caravans of workers weren't pulling through town this year. Fjord had nearly torn out his hair trying to figure out how they were going to get all the crops in themselves, before Beau had disappeared and turned up with a crowd of Lionett vinyard employees -- all here completely off the books of course, since they had signed contracts not to work for any of the Lionett family's competitors. "Hey, it's pretty much the only thing I can do these days to piss off my old man," Beau said when Fjord asked her if it would really be all right. "Besides, they're not around, so who'll know?" Fjord paid the workers time and a half, in cash, and tried not to worry about it.

Between herding the tourists, harvesting the crops, and the daily chores of caring for the animals and keeping the ranch running that couldn't be put on pause for anything, Fjord was working flat out for a few weeks. He barely had the energy to do more than stop by the cabin every few days to check to make sure his tenant was still alive and didn't need anything before sloping off to the house to fall face-first into bed.

Weekends were no respite from the flat-out schedule, because with the weekend came the birthday parties.

It had been another one of Jester's ideas, and Fjord thought it looked fine (weird, but fine) on paper. Most of the horses lodging at the ranch belonged to other owners, but a handful of them were solidly ranch property including Countess, a lovely dappled grey mare. A bit of makeup and stage props later and Jester was able to advertise on their website a genuine  _ Unicorn Princess Birthday Party!, _   complete with unicorn, bring your own princess. 

Fjord, never having had much contact with the four-to-twelve female cohort, had privately doubted they would see any interest. He should have known better to doubt Jester; they were booked up for every weekend day from now till the end of Cuersaar. Sure, fine, no big deal; Jester had found a bakery -- the Slayer's Cake -- that did catering, so all Fjord had to do was lead out the unicorn on schedule, set off a few pink-bedazzled sparklers, and supervise pony rides.

Easy to say, harder to do. On this particular Saturday afternoon Fjord found himself chasing spooked ponies around the paddock while a half-dozen little hyperactive gnome girls tore shrieking around the yard and pink-frosted cake made its way into mind-bogglingly unlikely corners of the ranch. At least the shrieking sounded happy? Maybe? 

"OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I FOUND A SQUIRREL!" the birthday girl, a blonde gnome girl with an inordinate number of twigs in her hair from climbing through the bushes earlier, announced enthusiastically from her perch up a nearby tree.

_ "I FOUND A SQUIRREL!" _ one of her friends, a young (was she young? was she female? how could Fjord tell?) kenku mimicked uncannily as she crawled rapidly along the ground after Frumpy. The barn cat fled into the crawl space under the porch, for which Fjord could hardly blame him.

"When are we gonna get to ride the pony?" another of the guests said, a touch of a whine in her voice that even Fjord's limited experience with kids told him spelled trouble.

"Just a few more minutes, we'll be ready in just a few minutes," Fjord panted, stooping over to reassure her. "Just gotta get Count -- I mean Princess Unicorn here back in her saddle and then we'll all take turns. Why don't you sit nice and quiet over by the mounting stairs there, and..." His invention deserted him. "...watch the squirrels," he finished weakly.

"THEY HAVE SQUIRRELS HERE THIS IS SO COOL!" the birthday girl screeched, marking down the day as the momentous occasion in her life in which there was a squirrel.

"This party  _ sucks," _   whined the dark-haired girl -- gnome? Half-elf? Quarterling? Fjord couldn't tell at this age -- as she kicked the ground, pouting fit to bring on a thunderstorm. She wore a glittery blue-and-silver princess dress and a headband with blue feathers attached, now dangling precariously off at the tips, and Fjord did not like his odds if she decided to complain to her parents. "Why don't we have a wizard? Mary's dads got a wizard for  _ her  _ birthday party."

Beau had gone to ground after the first hour and Fjord couldn't really blame her. But it meant that there was just him, Yasha, and one extremely junior pastry chef left to ride herd on the passel of kids  _ and _   the ponies they were meant to be riding. The parents -- and, Fjord suspected, most of the rest of the caterers -- had one and all dropped their kids off at the gate and then fucked off to  _ Molly's _ ; Fjord wished his friend well of it, but wished even more for at least one more warm body to try to wrangle the situation into some semblance of order.

And here came one now.

When Fjord looked up he saw rounding the corner a familiar stranger: Caleb Widogast, standing at the corner of the house and looking rather dazed. He was dressed today in a long coat Fjord hadn't seen before, with his black tie open and looped around his neck like a thin scarf. He also wore a bowler hat and a pair of gloves with silver stitching along the knuckles, also new to Fjord; the clothes looked as fine and expensive as all the city clothes did, but distinctly rumpled and unlaundered after more than a month of living in Fjord's cabin.

Caleb caught his eye and started towards him, ducking his head as he approached. "I, ah --" he started to say, but never finished the sentence.

"Are you a  _ wizard?" _   one of the little girls demanded, running up to him and seizing the sleeve of his coat. 

"Eh...  _ Entschuldigen _ _?"_ Caleb said, blinking in astonishment.

He looked down his sleeve at his new hanger-on and Fjord cringed. In his experience, executive city types didn't take well at all to being grabbed at by dirty and rowdy children, and the last thing he needed was a confrontation between two of his guests.

"You're dressed all funny and you're wearing a black cape and a magic hat!" the little girl exclaimed, drawing the attention of more and more of the stray party guests. "You  _ have _   to be either a prince or a wizard but you have glasses, and only smart people have glasses so you  _ can't _   be a  _ prince! _   You're a wizard, right?!"

Already a ring of loud, enthusiastic, pink-tressed little girls was gathering around Caleb. Fjord dropped his pursuit of the stray horse and legged it over towards this brewing conflict. But before he could close the distance, Caleb dropped into a crouch and said "Oh yes, I am a wizard,  _ ja. _   I was just a little confused because where I come from, we say  _ der Mazier  _  instead."

" _ Der muzzier," _   several of the girls chorused, while one asked "Where do you  _ come _   from? Is it  _ fairyland? _ Oh!" she gasped in revelation. "Is it  _ Equestria?!" _

"No, I am afraid not," Caleb said. "I come from Zemni. But that was a long time ago. I was your age when I came to this country."

The girls paused, clearly having some trouble imagining a grownup as being of an age with them. The one who had first grabbed his sleeve -- the persistent one -- went on to say, "But you can do  _ magic?" _

" _ Ja, _   a little bit," Caleb said. He fiddled in his pocket for a moment and came up with a shiny brass button, which he displayed to the crowd. He then waved it about for a little, did a little contact-juggling -- flipped it neatly from the back of one hand onto the other, which made the girls gasp -- and then with a  _ snap, _   displayed both hands empty. "Where did it go?"

" _ Is it fairyland? Is it Equestria?" _   the Kenku echoed, while one of the other girls scowled. "No, it's just in your sleeve!" she said. "Or in your pocket?"

"Is it?" Caleb said, and a small smile spread over his face. "Or is it in  _ your _   pocket? Why don't you check?"

This triggered a scramble of little girls turning out their pockets, during which Caleb caught Fjord's eye over their heads and gave him a solemn wink. Still a bit stunned by the change of fortune Fjord did not waste it, turning back to recapture the errant unicorn and get the show back on the road.

In the end the pony rides waited another fifteen minutes while Caleb entertained the rapt audience of girls with some basic sleight-of-hand tricks, a few flashes of flame that made the little girls  _ oooh _   in awe. By the time Caleb seemed to run out of tricks and made his excuses, Fjord was ready to recapture their attention and lead them on to the main event.

After the pony rides -- the Birthday Girl got as many rides on the Unicorn Princess as she wanted, while her friends rode the less-decorated but still amiable other horses -- the herd of them settled in for punch and cake, and in due time the parents began trickling back in to collect their kids. Caleb had continued to lurk about the yard throughout the process, apparently willing to wait all day for Fjord, and at last Fjord got enough elbow to go talk to the man to see what he wanted.

"Thanks for your help back there, you really saved my bacon," Fjord said, catching his breath. "Didn't know you were an illusionist, on top of bein' a novelist."

" _ Keine ursache," _   Caleb muttered in a brusque tone. "I... it is just something I picked up over the years. But I, ah, I wondered if you could -- the propane tank at the cabin is empty, you see, and since it is getting colder at nights..."

"Oh, fu -- oh, f -- fudgecicles," Fjord said, correcting himself midword at the realization that there were still small children in hearing range. "I'm mighty sorry to have let that slip. I'll get that swapped out for you right away."

"No, ah, that is not exactly -- I mean ---" The man seemed to trip over his tongue nearly as badly. "I mean, there is propane at the store, one of the brothers there said they would deliver it, but I wondered if you had a cart of some kind --"

"No, there's no need for you to pay for your own propane," Fjord reassured him hastily. "That's included in your stay, I just didn't expect -- like I said I'll get that all fixed up for you before tonight, Mr. Widogast. No need for you to pay out of pocket, or trouble the Sols --"

"Caleb," the man mumbled.

"Sorry?"

"I, ah, you can call me Caleb," he repeated in a slightly louder voice. "If --"

"Caleb, is it?" a new voice broke into the conversation. Caleb flinched slightly as Fjord turned, then had to redirect his attention downwards to the shiny-pated top of a bald head about belt-height on him. The speaker was one of the parents Fjord vaguely remembered dropping off their daughter at the start of the party, now beaming delightedly at Caleb. "Wonderful performance! Wonderful work! My daughter was simply enthralled!"

"It was nothing," Caleb mumbled, his eyes searching the ground for something to meet that was not in line with the man's gaze.

"Well, never let it be said I can't recognize work well done," the gnome said blithely; he reached into his pocket and counted out several yellow bills, pushing them into Caleb's unenthusiastic hand. "Thank you for the joy you brought my daughter today! And you too, Mr. Mustang! This is such a nice little farm you have here, absolutely charming!"

"Thank you, Mister... Schuster," Fjord said, barely managing to dredge up the customer's name in time to avoid embarrassment. He scrambled a bit for the script Jester had made him memorize for this part. "If your little lady had a good time with us, don't forget to leave us a positive review on Yelp, our business thrives on word-of-mouth recommendations."

"Certainly!" With a beaming smile and a firm handshake, Schuster bustled off to round up his daughter and wife. The party was breaking up none too soon, as heavier clouds were beginning to roll in and a few ominous raindrops were beginning to spritz down.

"I, ahhh... this is for you," Caleb muttered, thrusting the notes towards Fjord. He frowned.

"Now, I don't think they are," he said in a reasonable tone. "Seems that the gentleman meant them for you."

"It was your event, it is your money," Caleb said, still holding them out. "I do not need it."

"If I'd actually hired you on properly as the party's entertainment, I sure wouldn't try to rob you of your rightful fee. You did good work today," Fjord said firmly. He reached up to close Caleb's hand around the money, pushing it back towards him, only to have the man knock his hand away forcefully.

"I do not need handouts!" Caleb hissed. Seething. "I do not want... What I did was not  _ worth _   this much. It is yours. Take it!"

Fjord had a very sharp retort on his lips about  _ handouts, _   but at the last minute changed his mind. If Mr. Rich Clothes wanted to literally shove money into his hands, who was he to turn him down? "Thank you kindly," he said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He shoved his hand into his pocket, took a step back, and tipped his hat towards Caleb. "I'll just see about that propane tank, then."

_ "Du machst das," _ Caleb bit out, then spun around and stormed out of the yard, hands in his own pockets, head hunched. Fjord couldn't think of the last time he'd seen a man so offended by being offered money.

But as much as Caleb's brusque, unfriendly nature rankled, Fjord couldn't quite dismiss the image from his mind of Caleb in the yard earlier: surrounded by little girls, crouching down to put himself at more of their level, speaking to them in a friendly, earnest tone of voice as he entertained them with magic from his fingertips. Which was the real Caleb Widogast, then?

The rain was beginning to come down harder. Fjord sighed, squared his shoulders, and went to fetch the horses. He had a half-ton of things that needed to be moved under cover before the rain really got started, and then a propane tank to refill.

 

* * *

 

~tbc...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been slow getting back into writing again after finishing Sojourn, that one _really_ took it out of me. 60k over the course of six weeks, it was its own little NaNo. Phew. 
> 
> But I've got another chapter of this one coming soon -- I was actually thinking I'd post them both together, but would rather retain the format of each scene being its own sorta little thing. So, another chapter probably Friday with more BeauYasha disaster flirting. After that, back to my poor neglected Molly's Moving Castle, and then -- holiday fics? Maybe? Who knows!


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